Cata: More druid talent proposed changes

So, I started writing posts about how all the various talent trees should be changed. However, I ended up with huge walls of text that didn’t make sense and weren’t going to be fun to read. So, I found the war-tools website that allows us to create our own talent trees. So, instead of a lot of explaining, I can “show” the direction I’d like our talent trees to head in. After a couple of hours building the talent trees, I have something that I like a little better than the current Beta version of the trees.

So, for comparison purposes, (build 12479 – REMOVED) version of the talent trees.

32 comments on “Cata: More druid talent proposed changes”

What, you don’t want improved eclipse?!?! I’m expecting that we will get moonkin form at level 10 anyways, so no reason to have it in the talent tree 🙂

Also, keep in mind that the aim of these talent trees was to remove passive talents. I’ll agree that moonglow is a passive ability, and should be left out too, but so is Nature’s Splendor and Nature’s Majesty. They shouldn’t be in there, at least 🙂

I moved the improved eclipse “when hit” effect to Lunar Guidance instead of wasting 3 more talent points on Eclipse. In the first 2 tiers of the talent tree, we need more passive abilities so that we can have things that can overlap between resto & moonkin. Having more passive talents is better than having one cookie-cutter build for each spec with zero choice.

I’m rather surprised you didn’t just kill Lunar Justice entirely. The talent isn’t good for PvE or PvP. Its only conceivable use would be as a leveling talent, and it’s far too little to even be good at that.

Overall I like your trees a little bit better. There still doesn’t seem to be a great deal of choice, as I can still get just about everything I’d ever want, but at least it doesn’t feel quite as mindless as what we’ve got.

Also, I notice that the version of Tree of Life on your talent tree has some differences from what was previously shown on beta. Specifically that Lifebloom has a damage reduction buff and Thorns is gone. Is this a change made in the current build, or just wishful thinking?

One thing that I have seen when looking through the talents is that most of them are only lower ranks of current talents (see entire first tier of all trees). What I want to know is if the values will be increased to compensate (ie. .5 sec off of wrath/starfire cast time etc.).

I am not sure what to think of the feral tree. With so few talents compared to the old trees it is hard to split up a dps spec and a tanking spec. This is especially true when you look at what has been removed.

Mostly we see key talents that make Bear Form and Cat Form actually viable. Things like Heart of the Wild, Predatory Strikes, Protector of the Pack, Improved Leader of the Pack and all of the talents associate with Sharpened Claws. Are these key talents that buff everything about being a feral druid going to be baked into the forms?

I also found what they chose to keep as incredibly odd. I do not know a single druid that picks up Nurturing Instinct. Rend and Tear is now completely worthless for a tanking druid because Maul is much less important compared to the new Pulverize ability. Thick hide is another one of those lack luster talents that it seems like they’re trying to move away from but is still in the tree. Fury Swipes is one of those odd talents where it is extremely hard to tell if it is worth having. An extra swing every 6 seconds does not seem that valuable, but unfortunately there are not any better places to put the points.

I do have a few thoughts on Furor. I would like to see it broken up. The bear portion should be attached to something like Primal Fury, the cat portion should be part of Primal Madness (or if it needs to be on a lower tier because cat is the primary feral leveling form Feral Swiftness is a good option). I am not sure where the moonkin portion would go. Owlkin frenzy seems like a good option if it is linked to moonkin form like your suggested tree (especially because it is not a key part of the moonkin leveling experience). This would also make Owlkin Frenzy seem like a talent that would actually increase raid dps (although I do not really like the mixing of pvp and pve talents).

I would like to see Master Shapeshifter back, maybe even combining it with Natural Shapeshifter.

My biggest complaint so far I think would be that it does not seem like there is any decision where the points go in the tree.

The thing about Thick Hide is that it’s a very Bear-centric talent. Yeah, it’s of the passive buff variety, but it distinguishes between a pure bear build and a pure cat build. There has to be some places in there for Bears to spend points Cats wouldn’t and vice versa, or you’d end up with a tree that could do exceptional tanking and dps with the same build. There has to be some kind of penalty to both if you’re going to try some kind of Hybrid build that lets you perform both roles.

All 3 druid trees are super broken on Beta right now, and this is just my attempt to make it LESS broken. lol. I don’t have enough end-game feral experience to really fix the feral talent trees, so I added the version from honorless to give people a better talking-point.

The big way the feral trees work is that they buff abilities/stats by percentages, and because those all got removed we’re not going to know how Feral plays until they basically rebuild them into cat form and bear form (or the abilities they changed). I think were going to have to wait a patch till we can really try and help Feral.

I would like to see Furor disbanded into different talents. The three things it does are fun and interesting (and incredibly useful for pvp), but I don’t feel like they belong together (especially the moonkin Int buff it gives, the only reason it is there is to give moonkins something valuable on the way to Ooc).

War Tools is not very user-friendly, but once you figure out how it works, it goes okay. The icons aren’t in very convenient or easy to find places, so I ended up using someone else’s talent model as a base so that I wouldn’t have to find all the icons.

Nice attempt here, but like you said it makes them less broken. I still seem to be able to go through the tree and say “ah ok, more damage I’ll take that talent”.

If we have 41 talents to spend this means that Moonkins choose between starfall and Nature’s swiftness as you need 42 points to get both. Even though this choice may not be intentional it would be a nice choice to have if they were equally powerful talents. I think most if not all will go for starfall since both can be used when moving and starfall will probably do as much single target damage as an instant starfire and more on multiple targets. The cooldown is also less. If this difference could be made up by changing Nature’s swiftness slightly we would have an interesting choice that affects playstyle.

You have to put 31 talent points in your first tree (ie. pick up starfall). You can’t choose nature’s swiftness because you only have 10 points that a balance druid can put into resto, and nature’s swiftness requires 11 points.

To add to that, Nature’s Swiftness is only active for one cast. With Wrath riding the GCD, there’s really no difference for that spell. Even in Cata, the benefit would be minimal. With Starsurge, you have the same situation. I don’t see how this would lead to a DPS increase. (Oh and you can’t cast Starfire with it. It’s for nature spells only)

I like the basic idea you’re following: move talents into their respective trees rather than hiding them in other trees (or make them accessable at least by putting them in lower tiers). As a moonkin however, the current design has a major flaw: 31 points are barely enough to reach Starfall (which is one of our best DPET spells). So i’ve no points left to pick dps talents like “Blessing of the Grove” or “Master Shapeshifter”!

I feel that the solution could be found by implementing broader tiers (more talents to choose from) but less of them and keeping the same requirements to advance to the next tier (5 points), Or take the lazy way out: reduce the advance restriction to 3 points.

Lissanna, when you talk about changing the ToL impact on Lifebloom….what is the current effect? For that matter, I searched around on the forums but haven’t been able to find the current effect of ToL on any of our healing spells. What does it do in the beta build?

The current version of tree adds 2 lifebloom stacks instead of 1. However, lifebloom can only be put on one person at a time, so it’s not a useful effect. I don’t think I adjusted the other ones in mine, but I don’t remember.

I don’t have a range checker on Beta, but Starsurge still has a shorter range than Wrath or Starfire. I assume this means that the 36 yard range is now standard on those spells and our DoTs but not on Starsurge.

It’s been mentioned elsewhere that Moonkin Form’s role in the Balance talent tree has been… eclipsed by the importance of the Eclipse mechanic.

I agree with that statement. As of right now, the Form is just an aura buff. Personally, I’d like to se the form get a more interesting synergy with the Eclipse mechanic, and I think I may have something.

What if Moonkin Form was NOT an aura buff, but instead buffed Lunar and Solar Energy gains from damaging spell casts? What if the talents that buffed the additional Energy gains from Improved Eclipse, Euphoria, and Lunar Guidance were rolled into Moonkin Form?

Mana regeneration could become the province of baseline caster form. Eclipse operates the same in either Moonkin or Caster Form, but spellcrits, Innervate, Lunar Justice beams and Eclipse Euphoria yield greater mana returns in Caster Form than in Moonkin Form.

This gives Moonkin form a substantial role in the Eclipse mechanic, and gives players a reason to shapeshift in and out of Moonkin Form in combat.

Eclipse is such a clunky mechanic that I’m against having any more of our DPS tied to Eclipse than what already is, because we’re going to have serious DPS problems while moving as it is right now. I’d rather have them get everything else right and leave moonkin form as it is, rather than making it all worse.

We gain somewhere around 6 to 10% intellect in moonkin form right now from Furor, which is actually a huge bonus to spell power and our mana pool with the level 85 mechanics.

– I have heard that polymorph immunity for caster druids may or may not be going away. The current beta build (according to a mage friend in the beta) hasn’t made this a reality just yet and before it does, I’d like to see in the tooltips of the master shapeshifter talent an indefinite polymorph immunity when shapeshifted (moonkin and tree forms, respectively…especially since treeform is so limited anyhow).

– I’d also like to see those flavor talents that were useful but were trimmed. Improved Barkskin for one (but probably higher up so all druid specs can use it, not like before when only Trees could benefit from it). But seeing as how this is about overall feasibility to druids and not just the personal tastes of few, maybe improved barkskin can be tacked on to a currently existing talent in the trees…maybe even the shapeshifter talent and/or the 31-point Tree of Life talent for Restos.

-So far, is there nothing that reduces cooldown on Tree of Life form? A talent or glyph? I think that would be useful, considering most classes that have a specialized 5-min cooldown ability are given the opportunity to reduce said cooldown (i.e. Prot Pally and the Divine Shield cooldown). I’m not saying it has to be a lot, maybe just a minute reduction, but seriously would like to use the ToL form more than once a fight (for most bosses, not all).

-Nature’s Swiftness…A certifiable ohshit-pvp talent. Does this really need to be in the talent tree? I don’t even use it now with my current pvp build as I so rarely used it when I did to the point where I couldn’t justify having it (I found insect swarm more useful in my resto pvp build than NS).

-I like the idea of a talent like Effloresence. I really need to see first hand how the aoe portion of the heal works. Because in my mind, from past experience, heals that require to RUN TO THEM to gain their affect (i.e. Lightwell) have never been successful in excecution (I think Gluth was probably the only exception), and therefore, a waste of talent space. Liss, can you explain this to clarify. Because in my mind, what I would like to see from the flower-poop of the crit is to have a semi-close range aoe-heal that’s like a mini-tranquility but doesn’t really require injured party members to actually stand in it, just be near it (from what I currently understand of the way it exists now, that’s not the case).

-Overall, the slimmed down trees make choosing talents a bit easier, especially for the new players base the devs are aiming for specifically with the old world revamp. That said, what’s being lost is the opporunity to have fun with talent builds and some “flavor” talents people can toy around with. With the current talent tree preview, the “cookie-cutter” spec was easy to construct without thinking and when I was done building it, I had a point leftover that I assume was meant for Nature’s Swiftness (but since I don’t use it, nor do I plan to, it made for a wasted opportunity to put that point in something flavorful that would have added to my gameplay). When the first talent tree previews were released, the devs were committed to pruning the trees of crap and giving us the choice of what and where we could put the extra points outside of the core talents we were meant to have. With a 31-point tree, that choice is severely limited. I guess 180-ing is only natural with beta testing, but still, I did like the idea of choice and not just having the “cookie-cutter build”.

Effloresence would be powerful if cast on people who are clumped together. However, it’s potent even just on the one person you cast it on, so long as they aren’t moving. So, it may be a little bit hit-or-miss in heavy movement fights, and the random proc makes it unreliable for timing, but it is really potent & powerful to make up for those drawbacks.

Yeah, the way it stands now, I’m thinking it would be a Tank healing tool so that when you critheal on the tank (omg…heals crit?! LOL), he gains the AOE heals from the flowerpoop as well as the melee around him. But, if movement is required, then the aoe heal is pretty much wasted, whichs makes correct your assessment of it being hit-or-miss.

You have some good changes in resto, but i actualy like the ones that wowtal haz shown.. the only think that has to be changed in resto in my opinion .. is the tier 2 .. if you add there for example naturalist or something like that.. it would be a good talent tree..

Well, swiftmend has to get taken out of the wowtal version, since swiftmend is the level 10 ability and not a talent – so, that’s just something bugged right now. I also wanted to add in Tier 1 and Tier 2 talents that actually effect restoration druids (furor & the mana reduction on shifting talent doesn’t help resto druids all that much). In addition, we lost the instant-cast bonus from rejuvenation that I added back into my version of the talent tree, and that’s really all I did to the tree.

I might be a bit late on the comment but I only saw this post now, I would like to say that you’re restodruid tree is very nice altho I would love to see some “Rejuv heals X% more” (I like my rejuvs…). The current wowtal version sux

some lifebloom buffs in the tree would be nice for a tankhealing druid

nice work overall, I’ve added you to my blogroll and RSS (my bad for not doing this faster)

At the moment from my experience in beta, the 50% snare is to harsh a penalty for ToL. How will ToL be useful in boss fight requiring lots of fast movement, with ToL having a CD this makes ToL useless to use in such boss fight as you need to cancel it to move faster around? Secondly the current casting times of Healing Touch and Nourish are the same and way too long ~ 2.7 s. What happens to the Naturalist talent to reduce these casting times? Will the Mastery system change this?